Biography
Kirkhope was brought up in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire and attended King James's School (like his fellow trumpet player and good friend, Simply Red's Tim Kellett). Kirkhope played in various bands after leaving the Royal Northern College of Music, including Zoot and the Roots along with the saxophonist, Snake Davis. Kirkhope also spent many years as part of "the big bad horns" which were part of U.K. band "Little Angels". At the age of 33 he was employed by Rare. Before joining Rare, in October 1995, he played for two bands called Syar and Maineeaxe where he played guitar, and already knew Robin Beanland, another Rare composer. Kirkhope's music, featuring an electric guitar, is played on an Ernie Ball/Musicman EVH given to him by Eddie Van Halen. Kirkhope's skills on guitar can be heard on Killer Instinct Gold, Perfect Dark, Starfox Adventures or Grabbed by the Ghoulies.
When he joined Rare, due to being the "new boy", he was assigned to convert the music of Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest for Donkey Kong Land 2, he finished the conversion in December of the same year. He was later asked by Graeme Norgate to finish composing the music for GoldenEye 007 so that Norgate could focus on Blast Corps. Norgate taught Kirkhope how to get music and sound effects into the Nintendo 64. His work on the game eventually reached Tim Stamper and Gregg Mayles, who reassigned him to compose for Project Dream with David Wise, who left the project shortly after to work on Diddy Kong Racing.
On 14 July 2008, Kirkhope stated in his MySpace blog that he was resigning from Rare. He joined THQ studio Big Huge Games, as audio director.
Big Huge Games was acquired by 38 Studios in May 2009, the company founded by Curt Schilling. Kirkhope went on to compose both the music and sound effects for Big Huge Games's million selling role-playing game Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which was released in February 2012.
On 24 May 2012, 38 Studios announced that it would be laying-off its entire staff, including Kirkhope and the employees of Big Huge Games, due to the effects of the financial downturn.
In June 2012, Grant Kirkhope played at several festivals with fellow members of the reunited band Little Angels. In 24 July, Kirkhope announced that he had composed music for a Zynga video game for Facebook with an announced release date of October.
He has since moved to Los Angeles to pursue his composing career and to join Spark Unlimited. He is also working on a game with Danny Baranowsky. It's also confirmed that he is involved with a small team of ex-Rare employees to plan a Banjo-Tooie spiritual successor, using Twitter to gauge interest.
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